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Reply to Noob Seeking Cultural & Diplomatic Assistance in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

No matter how you want to win, you need to have a decent military rating. When your rating is low, other civs will dislike you, they'll give you bad deals, relations will lower, they'll demand tribute, and they'll attack you. When your military rating is high, they'll like you, they won't attack, they'll give you better deals, and they'll even give you gifts. Military rating is something like attack + defense + hp/10 summed over all your ships. So you can inflate your military rating

Reply to endless trading in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

If your military rating is much higher than yours, they may think that paying you that much for protection is worth it. But over twenty techs does seem extreme.

Reply to ultimate happy joy center in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Put it in this folder: C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\Mods\Default\Data\PlanetImprovements Then when you start the game, go to options and check the "Use Mods" box, and set the mod folder to "Default". You'll have to restart the game, and that should do it.

Reply to How did Combat change? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Good, I've been wondering how it works now. But no matter how it's working, it seems like Visibledark's fleet should be winning fairly decisively. I think I know one weird thing that's going on. A laser has a power of one, so it always does exactly one damage to an enemy with no defenses. But a plasma has two power, so it rolls either a one or a two. Its average damage is only 1.5. So a laser 5 is a stronger weapon than a plasma 1, because the plasma is larger.

Reply to UI Suggestion in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Yeah, this has always been kind of weird. If the first ship that moves uses up all its moves for that turn, then the next ship in the group will move. But if one of the ships reaches the destination with moves left over, it will remain selected, and the rest of the ships in the group won't move until after you hit "end turn." It seems like it would be easier if selecting multiple ships worked like Windows or recent RTS games.

Reply to TCancer's 4X comparison article in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I think his final conclusion is OK where YourConscience says that "If you like to experiment a lot and role-play your empire, your preferences are clearly with SEV. If you want a challenge and your general sci-fi fix, go for GalCiv2." But I think a lot of his criticisms of GalCiv make little sense. In SEV, he raves about choices between guns or armor or supplies or ammo, but you get all those choices in GalCiv2 except for ammo, since life support in GalCiv2 does the same thing as supplies in S

Reply to Drengin Influence Explosion in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I once ran into a bug where the population of one of my planets jumped to a huge number, and since influence is proportional to population, so did my influence. My population returned to the farm's cap the next turn, so it fixed itself. That was on one of the earlier patches, and I think it's been fixed since then.

Reply to Cancelling a ship build in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Clicking 'Cancel' means you're canceling any changes you just made. If you don't want to build a ship, you should select 'Nothing' at the top of the list of ships, and then click 'Done'. That seems to be working just fine.

Reply to Developers we could use your opinion in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

defense in this game needs an advantage Absolutely true. Right now there's basically no viable defensive strategies other than military starbases. I agree with this. Actually, I disagree that military starbases are a viable defense. They're expensive to research, expensive to build (especially if you're not evil), and they really ar

Reply to Troop Carriers in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I have been building fleets of 7 transports built on huge hulls. Each has a single adv crew carrier, and a speed of something like 107. But huge hulls are more expensive than cargo hulls, and they don't hold that much more. Plus, all those engines aren't free either. And with only one advanced troop module on each ship, it will probably take s

Reply to Discussion about constructor micromanagement in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'll add another vote for a governor that can say "all ships of type A go to rally point X," or "all newly built ships of type B go to rally point Y." My problems with starbases and constructors could be solved by adding a starbase module governor that works exactly like the planetary improvement governor in GalCiv1. This would let me set up a queue for starbase modules that's automatically on when a new starbase is founded. So when a constructor reaches a starbase, the next module

Reply to Speed Bumps and School Zones in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I think the game would be plenty interesting if most ships were to move 10 squares per turn or slower. I doesn't change strategy that much, except that you have to plan your moves more turns in advance, and your enemy has more turns to react to your moves. The ideas I like so far are: 1) Make engines larger and more expensive. You should have to pay (a lot) to get a speed advantage over your enemies. If your ships are much faster than your opponent's, then a smaller fleet of l

Reply to how to get a 'balanced' game? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Is there something inbetween getting squashed like a bug or being so powerful that i loose interest? This is a good question, and I don't have a good answer for it. I'd recommend playing defensively as much as possible. Do everything you can to stay alive, even if it hurts your long term growth. The best strategy for this is to build up your diplo

Reply to OK - I need some help with the campaign guys.. in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The campaign may be easier if you play it on a higher difficulty level. When the AIs aren't penalized so much, they'll be able to put up a stronger fight against the dreadlords, so you won't have to do all the work yourself. The trick to beating the dreadlords in a fight is to understand how the combat system works. No matter how much attack power a ship has, it can only shoot one enemy each round. Since dreadlord ships have a ton of attack power, they'll crush one of your ships wi

Reply to Tile Enhancements in DA? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I didn't think the tile bonuses were too common in Dread Lords. They made it so that planets were more interesting than just a PQ number.

Reply to A couple weeks after game purchase... in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Edit: I'm to slow too, and I don't think I really have anything to add. 1) The game doesn't animate ship movement if you can't see it, so zoom in on an unoccupied square when you hit end turn. 2) Does switching to windowed mode make a difference? I don't know. 3) That would be a very nice feature to have. The best method I've found is to manually set the rally points for all the planets building constructors, and then move that rally point whenever I want a

Reply to The best tactic in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

It's hard to go wrong with fast medium ships with no defenses and decent weapons. They're fast to research and cheap to build, and plenty effective against almost anything.

Reply to Planet specialization strategies? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

When deciding how to specialize a particular planet, I like to think about its "effective PQ" for each possible specialization. The EPQ is the planet's actual PQ plus a number that depends on the bonuses that planet has. For example, a planet with PQ 11 and a 300% bonus for research would have an EPQ of 14 for research, and an EPQ of 10 for anything else because I'd still put a lab on the bonus tile. EPQ can also include bonuses from moons, rings, colonization events, distance to enemy territ

Reply to YOR Super Ability has to change in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I think the simple way of solwing the problem is to limit the number of Movement points a Ship has to 8. Or you can make any drives technologies taking from 50-25% of the ship space. Please don't add a hard cap to ship speed. That will just make all ships go the same speed. What's the point of designing ships if there's only one right d

Reply to Which fleet wins this battle? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

My money's on the humans. That's a lot of attack power, and they outnumber the Iconians. The fleet of four has a lot of hp, but not enough defense to really reduce the damage they take.

Reply to Noob Question in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

You start with 5000 bc in the bank, so losing money at the beginning of the game isn't a big problem. Just make sure you've built a profitable economy before the starting money is all gone. Here's how the economy works. Your primary income early on is taxes. So grow your population, so that there are more taxpayers, and increase your tax rate to get more money. The catch is that a high tax rate reduces morale, which reduces your population growth. This is what I do: at the begin

Reply to Upgrade Defenders??? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I don't bother protecting planets with defenders. It's cheaper to intercept enemy transports in space. A fleet of fast ships can protect many planets, but you have to put defenders on every threatened planet. And the fast ships can be used offensively, too.

Reply to Small vs large ships in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I've found smaller fast ships not very useful in the game, one large ship with high defense and many weapons seems to trump all Even as far as cost, I can have one huge ship with an upkeep of 30, and my smaller ships are around

Reply to Purpose of Tiny ships? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Biggy Boy, check the date on the previous post But you're right, those tinies are good against enemies with lots of attack and little defense.

Reply to Retire if you lose the initial rece for colonies? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Being stuck with only your home system does kind of suck, but with those settings against 9 opponents, no one is going to have more than a few planets. So I don't think it's hopeless. But I wouldn't do what everyone else is suggesting. I'd go for a fast rush. Develop your planets with just the basic structures, then research planetary invasion. If you're fast enough, you can have transports and invade before your enemy even has combat ships. That will make up for your lack of colon